I've created several avatars, but unfortunately most of them were on my flash drive which was stolen from the university library. Most recently, I have been making Fox and King-themed avatars, like the one I currently use.

Also Rick has several of my older ones, if he should feel like posting an example. *laughs*

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Mon Dec 28, 2009 2:31 am

Alex

Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:41 pmPosts: 3792Location: End of Time

Re: Avatars

Okay, I made more and organized the OP. I still haven't added Buck's banners. Please for everyone who's creating banners to organize them in a post like the OP is organized, it's easier for me to add them. I'm in a hurry to go to school now, so I'll re-update the OP with Buck's avatars when I get back.

Guys, I'm having problems. It says I need a file that's between 0 and 24 Kb, and my avatar's size is bigger than that. A little help?

Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:48 am

Anthroguy101

Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2009 1:43 pmPosts: 871Location: Baxter, MN

Problem solved

Never mind. If you guys have any problems, go to Start>All Programs>Accessories>Paint, and save it as a GIF.Also, haha, I totally called it!

Tue Dec 29, 2009 9:55 am

Frooxius

Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:00 pmPosts: 311Images: 43

Re: Avatars

Oh god... They're saving it as JPG again, although I said several times, that it's not appropriate format for this type of graphics. It degrades the quality, although they obviously used higher quality setting, so the artifacts are not so big, but the same cannot be said about file size. Once again: JPG is optimized for saving photos, not computer graphics (non-photo-like), use PNG instead.

Look, I saved the exactly same picture in PNG and suddenly, the size is down to ~19.1 KB, from ~34 KB, that's almost 50 % less! And with no quality loss! You can use this picture, since it already fits in the limit.

Also GIF you used is very poor choice. Don't you see that it decreased picture quality a lot? Especially when you used MS Paint, which does not optimize the palette and picture anyhow (dithering), so it looks very very bad.

It's generally believed that PNGs, due to being higher-quality images, always end up having larger filesizes than JPGs do. I thought this was the case myself until I was making avatars a few days back and found out that my PNGs were actually getting better compression. In addition, I'm not sure some older graphics programs may support saving as PNGs at all (Inkscape does, but its default format is SVG, and for some reason the PNGs come out really bloated...)

In summary,

_________________

Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:20 pm

Frooxius

Joined: Tue Jul 28, 2009 6:00 pmPosts: 311Images: 43

Re: Avatars

Well, that's basically what I said. When I saved it to PNG instead of JPG, it's size dropped almost to half (because PNG is optimized for such graphics, JPG for photos, so unless you use very low quality, it will be even larger). Also, don't take that "everyone is ignoring me" too seriously.Basically:

_________________

hug_overflow.asm Wrote:

LOOP: HUG #Peanut, #Grape PUSH ACC JMP LOOP

Last edited by Frooxius on Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tue Dec 29, 2009 1:41 pm

Alex

Joined: Wed Aug 05, 2009 3:41 pmPosts: 3792Location: End of Time

Re: Avatars

EDIT: Updated the OP again with 5 new avatars: One grape and 4 Marvin/Tiger/Zachary ones.

Yes. As you can see, JPG has clearly reduced the quality, while PNG left the picture nice and intact and yet, managed to create smaller size, even when you used lower compression setting. Look, I saved the same picture in PNG with higher compression setting and reduced that 14.5 KB to 9.58 KB with no quality loss.

9.58 KB (optimized) PNG

Once again, JPG uses cosine transform, which suitable for photos, where are smooth color changes, so it's very effective for them and does not cause such big artifacts. However, this algorithm is not designed for computer graphics, with large solid-color areas and sharp transitions (lines), where it produces visible artifacts and also does not compress it very well, because it's not compressing the type of data it was designed to. PNG on the other hand, is much more suitable for such graphics. It can compress it to very small sizes and yet, it does not remove any data or cause any artifacts. On the other side, it's not very good at compressing photos, because it was not designed to compress them, so it produces larger files than JPG (however, it is being used even for photos, when you need not to lose any data and have the original picture completely intact, like in graphics studios or medicine).

So basically: Why use format which cripples the picture, when there's alternative which stores it at maximum quality and yet, produces (usually, it's not a rule) smaller files than the crippling format? Why intentionally use the worse alternative?

Also look, here's the difference between JPG and PNG, when you XOR the both pictures (you can see which parts the JPG crippled):

Yes. As you can see, JPG has clearly reduced the quality, while PNG left the picture nice and intact and yet, managed to create smaller size, even when you used lower compression setting. Look, I saved the same picture in PNG with higher compression setting and reduced that 14.5 KB to 9.58 KB with no quality loss.

9.58 KB (optimized) PNG

Once again, JPG uses cosine transform, which suitable for photos, where are smooth color changes, so it's very effective for them and does not cause such big artifacts. However, this algorithm is not designed for computer graphics, with large solid-color areas and sharp transitions (lines), where it produces visible artifacts and also does not compress it very well, because it's not compressing the type of data it was designed to. PNG on the other hand, is much more suitable for such graphics. It can compress it to very small sizes and yet, it does not remove any data or cause any artifacts. On the other side, it's not very good at compressing photos, because it was not designed to compress them, so it produces larger files than JPG (however, it is being used even for photos, when you need not to lose any data and have the original picture completely intact, like in graphics studios or medicine).

So basically: Why use format which cripples the picture, when there's alternative which stores it at maximum quality and yet, produces (usually, it's not a rule) smaller files than the crippling format? Why intentionally use the worse alternative?

Also look, here's the difference between JPG and PNG, when you XOR the both pictures (you can see which parts the JPG crippled):

Fine, Tails, I switched to PNG. You win. Also, don't get your panties in a bunch. It's a free country (at least it is here), we'll use whatever format will work best for our needs.

Tue Dec 29, 2009 11:24 pm

Ebly

Joined: Sun Oct 26, 2008 10:01 amPosts: 4246Location: Imagination!

Re: Avatars

I don't know how you can get something as small as a 100x100 image to be over 24 kb.Are you kids smuggling drugs in your avatars?well i do know how but i'm being SILLY okay because i'm EBLY okay

_________________I was going to make a joke but then I did.

Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:16 am

RockstarRaccoon

Worst Mod EVER!

Joined: Sun Dec 27, 2009 5:50 pmPosts: 4597Location: South Florida

Re: Avatars

Avatar successfully stolen. >:|

_________________Hey guys, I'm one of the RP section mods. Feel free to bug me any time: I'm not strict and I try to be very approachable.Fanfiction Character: Vallerie Nightengale (female, idiot)

Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:49 am

Foxstar

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU

Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2009 8:00 amPosts: 1689

Re: Of PNGs, GIFs and JPEGs

BlueArmy Wrote:

Fine, Tails, I switched to PNG. You win. Also, don't get your panties in a bunch. It's a free country (at least it is here), we'll use whatever format will work best for our needs.

He just cares about the avatars looking good. Don't be snappy with him over that.

Also the internet is not a free country. Your subject to the whims and rules of whoever runs the website your visiting, the ISP that allows you to connect and the country your connecting from.

Wed Dec 30, 2009 2:41 am

Anthroguy101

Joined: Thu Dec 24, 2009 1:43 pmPosts: 871Location: Baxter, MN

Reply

Foxstar Wrote:

BlueArmy Wrote:

Fine, Tails, I switched to PNG. You win. Also, don't get your panties in a bunch. It's a free country (at least it is here), we'll use whatever format will work best for our needs.

He just cares about the avatars looking good. Don't be snappy with him over that.

Also the internet is not a free country. Your subject to the whims and rules of whoever runs the website your visiting, the ISP that allows you to connect and the country your connecting from.

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